Technical woes besiege federal marketplace, frustrate consumers

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn't provide any numbers on how many navigated the system.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn't provide any numbers on how many navigated the system.

Photo: Kin Man Hui / San Antonio Express-News

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Call operators answer phones on the first day of Obamacare at an eHealthInsurance Services Inc. call center in Sacramento, Calif. Insurance exchanges struggled to handle a flood of consumer interest.

Call operators answer phones on the first day of Obamacare at an eHealthInsurance Services Inc. call center in Sacramento, Calif. Insurance exchanges struggled to handle a flood of consumer interest.

Photo: Ken James / Bloomberg

Technical woes besiege federal marketplace, frustrate consumers

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While officials reported some consumers successfully enrolled in the health insurance marketplace on its first day of operation Tuesday, technical glitches made the federally operated website inaccessible to many across the country.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services refused to provide any numbers or estimates of how many people successfully navigated the system. Nor would they say how soon that data might become available.

CMS also downplayed the many technical deficiencies dogging HealthCare.gov throughout the day, with agency leaders insisting they already had corrected some problems and added capacity to accommodate large volumes of customers.

“We expect that we're going to be able to speed it up — and we have sped it up already,” CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner said during a mid-afternoon conference call with reporters. “As we have said before, with any new product launch, there are going to be glitches as things unfold. As things arise, we will fix them.”

Consumers took to Twitter and the comment sections of the marketplace's blog posts to complain of troubles accessing the site established under the Affordable Care Act.

Because Texas leaders declined to establish a state-run marketplace, the state is among 36 nationwide relying on the federal market, where consumers are supposed to be able to shop online for health insurance and apply for tax credits to reduce monthly premiums.

Many reported they had trouble getting past a series of security questions required to establish their marketplace account, however, because the prompts did not appear correctly on their computer screens. Others made it past the questions and tried to register, only to get an error message.

“Any clue when you're going to let me sign up? Process keeps breaking down at different steps. Been trying since midnight!” one Chicago woman posted in a Tweet to the federal market's Twitter handle of HealthCareGov.

“You've had three years. How many years do you need to get ready?” a New York man said in another Tweet, referring to the length of time since the Affordable Care Act was passed.

Government officials had few answers for those folks and other frustrated consumers encountering similar difficulties Tuesday. Vague replies were the norm throughout the day, with some promising fast repairs and others urging shoppers to browse during “off peak” hours, such as during the night and early in the morning.

Many of the replies blamed the problems on large volume of users trying to access the website. Some observers questioned whether the glitch in the security questions was caused by a coding error on the government site.

Tavenner, however, insisted CMS tested the site before its public launch Tuesday.

The market's “live chat” function on its web page also didn't offer much help Tuesday. One chat attempt took 24 minutes to connect with a staffer, who confirmed the problems weren't due to user error.

Despite their reluctance to share the number of successful enrollments, Tavenner and other CMS officials reported more than 2.8 million consumer visits to the website in its first 15 hours of operation.

The federal market also received more than 81,000 phone calls and at least 60,000 “live chat” requests in that same time frame, they said.

Later Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released direct links to health insurance plans for specific markets, including Bexar County.

Monthly premiums for the average 27-year-old in Bexar County — before any tax credits — range from $108.78 to $386.29 depending on the plan options.

The average 50-year-old in Bexar County, meanwhile, can choose from plans with monthly premiums ranging from $185.38 to $658.31.

The average Bexar County family seeking health coverage for everyone in the home can choose from marketplace plans with monthly premiums ranging from $367.44 to $1,304.82. Single-parent families in Bexar County seeking coverage for everyone in the home face slightly lower monthly premiums ranging from $249.63 up to $886.47.

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The average childless couple in Bexar County, meanwhile, will face monthly premiums ranging from $265.30 to $942.12. Monthly premiums for a health insurance plan to cover a child in Bexar County will typically range from $65.91 to $234.06.